But sometimes I still do.

January 12, 2012

The Bomber learned to read awhile back, and is now reading like a demon, assuming there's some demon whose evil power is reading books about dinosaurs and Hot Wheels. At first I thought this was an awesome idea, but like that whole walking & talking thing, it seemed better in theory than in practice. All this reading has really put a crimp in our spelling things we don't want him to know, and it's made it hard to claim there's no hot dogs on a restaurant menu. But I digress...

The reason I mention the Bomber's reading skills is because while his are improving by leaps and bounds every day, it appears that mine have been seriously deterioriating. What make me think that, you ask? Well, there's this sign in the street right in front of my house:

When they first put it up, I thought it read "Road Closed." I always understood those words to mean something like, "we don't want you to drive past this sign, because the road beyond is not meant to be used right now." Also, that little orange sign? I thought it read "Detour" which I always understood to mean "drive this way instead."

Apparently, though, I need to go back and take some kind of remedial reading course. Because the rest of the world (or at least the rest of the people who drive down my street) are apparently reading these signs differently. If I'm correctly understanding the proper interpretation of these two signs, "Road Closed" actually means "drive around this sign, and the one at the other end of the street, too, because we know you're far too busy and important to go 60 seconds out of your way." And that little orange sign? Apparently that means "and if you're going to be a sucker and turn that direction, you don't need to bother stopping at that pesky stop sign first."

Maybe I'll put up a little sign of my own. It'll read "Have a Nice Day!" I assume all the people driving down my street will correctly understand that those words actually mean "I hope you break an axle in that big old hole, or at the very least get a traffic ticket."

July 13, 2011

I know what you're saying.... "Why would a British wizard be living in Columbia, South Carolina? And if he did live in Columbia, why on earth would he live in YOUR crazy neighborhood? And why I am I even reading this crazy blog?!"

But I KNOW it's true. This morning when I was out running in the dark of night, in the inferno that is a Columbia summer, all of the street lights on the block went out simultaneously. Then a few minutes later, they came back on, one by one, as if someone had used a Deluminator on them.

See....? What else could it be? It's Occam's razor, folks... the presence of a British wizard living in the southeastern United States is clearly a far more simple explanation than a power brown-out (or running-in-the-heat-related demential)? Right?

March 27, 2011

Most Sunday afternoons the Bomber and I like to head to the library for a new infusion of books. Our public library has an awesome children's room - it takes up the entire basement of the building, and in addition to an enormous number of books, it also has comfy chairs, arts & crafts supplies, a Victorian dollhouse, and a huge collection of very large stuffed animals. This afternoon, the Bomber was playing in the area with the big stuffed animals when a little girl about his age came along.

Her name, she informed me in a very sweet voice, was Sally. She had a blue sparkly horse with a pink mane and three books about "horsies." She was wearing a cute little striped dress with embroidered flowers, lacy socks, and a purple raincoat with pink polka-dots and ruffles. Sally plopped right down next to the Bomber, introduced herself and announced that she and the Bomber would now be best friends. She was, in short, adorable.

The Bomber was playing with a big giraffe, pretending to eat leaves off the big "tree" (that'd be me). Sally looked thoughtfully around at the animals, and carefully selected a lion as big as she was, and a slightly smaller Corduroy bear, complete with green overalls. She sweetly petted the lion a few times, asked if it was hungry....

and then pretended the lion was eviscerating Corduroy. Complete with growly devouring sound effects from the lion and frightened howling from poor Corduroy. She was like Marlin Perkins in a Hanna Andersson dress. I think even the Bomber was a little disconcerted - he clutched the stuffed giraffe to his chest and backed slowly away from the still-snarling girl until he bumped into my legs. "Mommy," he whispered, "can we go now?" Good idea, kiddo. And maybe next week we'll go on Saturday...

January 25, 2011

I realized this morning that I forgot to B52OMOLISBE last week. Luckily I made up that rule about not feeling bad about it, so I'm not going to. I also wisely reserved the right to change the days in a week, so last week now officially ends today - SCORE, I got it in just under the wire! Go me!

Anyway, I woke up this morning and realized I missed last week needed to blog today, so I rifled through my pile of Things to Blog About (aka the junk in my craft room) and came up with something. I've actually been hanging on to this since before the holidays, but the computer that the scanner is attached to at home is now so old and crotchety that you have to turn it on at least four days before you plan to use it, sacrifice a small virgin chicken and say the magic words while standing on your left foot and balancing the keyboard on your head. Given the creative time management skills I demonstrated above, you can see why this has been sitting in the junk pile for the better part of six weeks. But I digress...

As some of you may remember, I somehow got into someone's database as being over 65, and have been receiving a steady stream of AARP membership invitations, guaranteed life insurance sales pitches and the occasional solicitation from conservative seniors groups. Early in December as part of this Bury Old (and Incorrectly Data-Entered as Old) People in Junk Mail Initiative, I received yet another solicitation for a Medicare Part B prescription plan. Unlike the usual ones, though, this one was prettied-up to look like a Christmas card. Sadly, the warmth of the holiday greeting was kind of ruined by this:

An advertisement? Really? It's a good thing they included that warning, isn't it? Because the cheap paper, preprinted address, bar code, bulk mail permit and enclosed information about a prescription drug plan would NEVER have clued me in otherwise.

January 15, 2011

The other day I ordered a fancy screen protector and a neoprene sleeve for my iPad (because you never know when you might want to take it SCUBA diving*) from Amazon. Because I order from Amazon so frequently, and because I have an unnatural love for Amazon Prime two-day shipping, I keep a bunch of small, silly things in my cart that I wouldn't bother ordering by themselves, and throw one or two in when I'm placing bigger orders. So the other day, after I ordered the iPad stuff, I threw in a book for the Bomber. Yesterday the iPad stuff arrived, via UPS, in a perfectly reasonably sized box:

When I pulled the screen protector and the sleeve out of the shrink wrap, though, I noticed the book was not in the box. So I checked my Amazon account and discovered that it has been sent separately. Okay, I know what you're saying... "so what? Amazon does that all that time." And so they do. But this was sent by FedEx Saturday Delivery, and I do not see how this:

could possibly be cost-effective. Especially when you consider this:

and this:

And that's just the surcharge, people. On top of the regular FedEx delivery charge. Honestly, with business practices like this, I doubt this company will be in business much longer.**

* I KNOW I can't take my iPad SCUBA diving, even in a neoprene sleeve. For one thing, I don't know how to SCUBA dive. And I don't think the iPad does either.

** That was a JOKE, y'all. It's AMAZON. I KNOW they're not tanking anytime soon, my $1.50-plus-$25-shipping puzzle book notwithstanding.

December 30, 2010

People of a certain age (not me, of course, since I'm only 29) will remember this as the tag line for Cookie Crisp cereal in the late 70s and early 80s. The theme of the commercials was that a wizard would catch someone trying to eat cookies for breakfast, and magically turn them into "cereal" - part of a complete breakfast!

It turns out, though, that good old Jarvis the Cookie Crisp wizard was WRONG. You can have cookies for breakfast. I know this, because since the holiday season really got underway three or so weeks ago, I've actually had cookies for breakfast once or twice or *cough* six times *cough*.

Somehow it seems like an awesome idea at 7:45 AM when I'm rushing around getting everyone ready to get out the door. "Let's see... for the Bomber, grapes, cheese, two all-natural cereal bars and an organic yogurt tube. For me... um...six snickerdoodles!"

I'm here to tell you though, if you do eat six snickerdoodles, or a piece of fudge and three chocolate crinkles, or four pfeffernüsse and two pieces of some graham cracker-chocolate-caramel thing, or three peanutbutter cookies and a partridge cookie in a pear tree cookie, it will give you a lovely sugar rush. It will not, however, make you even remotely able to sit in front of your computer and do research on the Architectural Barriers Act or the statute of limitations for collection of a debt owed to the city water utility.

On the bright side, it may motivate you to spend 30 minutes watching old commercials on YouTube or give you a topic for a blog post. So maybe cookies for breakfast aren't so bad after all!

December 29, 2010

He can even cut through a tin can, and still eat a tomato. Or something like that....

This Christmas my mom got me Wii Sports Resort, which is sort of like Wii Sports, but with snootier games - instead of boxing there's swordplay, instead of baseball there's skydiving, instead of bowling there's...um... bowling.

Anyway, I was trying out the new game during the Bomber's nap on Monday, and when he woke up and came downstairs, I was in the middle of a fencing match. After watching a few rounds of it, and making "useful" suggestions like "Mommy, try to not get knocked into the water next time," he decided he wanted to give it a go. Being four, he already knows everything and did not want any instruction on how to play, so I loaded up his Mii, and handed over the Wiimote.

To say he has an interesting fencing technique is something of an understatement. After a few rounds, I started calling it "the Ginsu." You really have to see it to appreciate it:

Amazingly, the Bomber Ginsu Technique works incredibly well. Better, by far, than my strategy of, you know, trying to play as if I had an actual sword. Within a few rounds, he'd beaten all the competitors I'd already beaten, along with most of the ones that had knocked me off. By the end of the evening, Larry and I were both using the Ginsu technique and doing pretty well with it.

So, no matter what the back of the box propaganda claims, it's pretty clear that the Wii Motion Plus thingy required to play Sports Resort does not necessarily provide a "more realistic playing experience." And I'm guessing that means the "escapism of the game's tropical island theme" isn't going to be a substitute for an actual trip to the Caribbean. I feel so disillusioned.

December 10, 2010

This afternoon when I checked my work mailbox, I discovered a small box, about 9" x 7" x 2" in my slot. In fact, there was a similar box in every attorney's mailbox. It was from one of the bigger law firms in town, and It looked like this:

Since it's the season for holiday swag-giving (or would that be swagging), I was pretty excited, although I couldn't think of what I, along with every other attorney in my firm, had done to deserve swag from this other firm. But hey, I like swag as much as the next person, and far be it from me to turn down a bigger firm's largesse, so I hustled back to my office and opened it. Inside was this:

In caes you can't tell, it's a single 8.5" x 6.5" sheet of cardstock:

With a small plastic compass attached:

(Sorry for the crappy photo quality - my cameras are both dead, and my cell phone is an inadequate substitute).

Anyway, it's an invitation to a free continuing legal education course sponsored by the big law firm. That's it. (What does a small plastic compass have to do with continuing legal education? Damned if I know.)

So, is it me, or was that package just the teensiest bit excessive for what could have been done via a single sheet of 8.5" x 11" paper, a postcard or even an email? What, do they have some funds they have to get rid of between now and the end of the year? It's like a box full of arrogant: Rescession, what's that? We've got money TO BUUUUURN. Oh, and hey, environment, screw you, too! And the best part is, the course they're sponsoring is on professional responsibility. Ethics - you're doing it wrong.

September 28, 2010

I have this Google Voice phone number that I pretty much use for everything now. I like it because I can text from my computer and have it seem like it's coming from my phone, I can get reply texts simultaneously via email and to my phone, I can have it forward calls to my cell phone, my work phone or my home phone, and I could, if I wanted to, set up an automatic schedule for forwarding that would forward my calls based on where I am during the day. (As if I *want* my telephone calls being able to find me so easily.)

Anyway, my very favorite thing about my Google Voice number is that when someone leaves me a voice mail (which they almost invariably do, because I hardly ever answer the phone), I get an email that includes an audio file of the voicemail and a transcription of what was said. Sort of.

The transcriptions are really more of a loose interpretation of what was said than an actual transcription. For example, one person called to tell me she was going to be late to a party we were giving, and she said "we're still coming, but we're just running behind." Google Voice transcribed this as "we're still coming blue just one of the Hines." Okay, I get it - people speak quickly and with accents, and there's interference and children crying in the background and all that stuff. I understand, really.I don't expect a whole lot from the transcriptions.

What bothers me is this: Most of the time when people leave me a voicemail, they start out with "Hi Jocelyn" or "Hey Jocelyn." Because that's my first name - Jocelyn. It's even on the information I supplied to the nice people at Google when I set up the Google Voice account. In fact, it's also on the information I supplied to the nice people at Google when I set up the Gmail account the Google Voice emails go to. In light of that fact, you'd think that transcribing that part of any message would be a slam dunk, right?

Um, no. Apparently, despite the enormous amount of revolutionary, brilliant and downright ingenious technology the people at Google have come up with, they still can't use the actual name provided in my account information to tell their transcription software that my name is not:

Jonathan

Jeff

Jeff man

Jeff on

Josh going

or

Test 1

Maybe it would be easier if I just changed my name to one of those. I think "Test 1" has a nice ring to it, don't you? Of course, as soon as I made the change, I'd probably start getting transcriptions that start out "Hey Jocelyn" and then I'd be complaining about that.

There's just no pleasing some people, is there? Or as Google Voice would say, "there's just no peas in saltpeter, miss fair."

July 23, 2010

So, two weekends ago my dad came down to visit us for the first time since we moved here. (He's not much of a traveler, and mostly we'd been going up there anyway.) Friday afternoon the Bomber and I went to meet him at the airport. CAE's pretty small, so there's only one place travelers emerge and you can see them coming as they down the long hall toward the security exit. So people start coming off the plane, and I see my dad coming down the hall, carrying only a briefcase. We do the hug & kiss thing, and then I escort him down to baggage claim, where I he looks at me like I have two heads and says "oh, I don't have any luggage." I look again at his briefcase, laugh and check to see if he's laughing, too. Nope. The man came for a weekend trip carrying only this:

I took this picture with the camera on my cell phone, so it's pretty bad, but I left the floor and some furniture in there in hopes of giving some perspective on the size of the thing. It's a briefcase like a businessman would carry to work. In fact, a businessman did carry it to work - my dad has had that briefcase for as long as I can remember. And somewhere in the family archives there's a picture of one of my two older sisters sitting in it as baby, so it's a good 42 or 43 years old.

In case you're wondering what was inside of it (that was the first thing my sister wanted to know when I texted her that picture), here it is:

It's pretty blurry, I think because I was laughing so hard while I took it. And in case you're interested, apparently a change of pants is unnecessary for a trip under three days long. I wonder if there's even clean underwear in there, or if just turned the same pair inside-out a couple of times. (What? You've never done that?)

On Sunday we escorted him back to CAE, where he was flagged for extra screening going through security. They took every single thing out of that briefcase (which took approximately 37 seconds), wanded and then patted him down. And honestly, I don't blame them. If I spotted him coming through security - three day old jeans, short-sleeve plaid shirt, horn-rimmed glasses, white sneakers and a BRIEFCASE - I'd think he looked like a mad bomber too.

On the other hand, it's possible I'm just jealous of his ability to pack light. I've had to hire a pack mule and two Sherpas for our upcoming trip to NJ & PA. And that's just for my stuff.